Outback backroads. 2000

This drive completes my trilogy of ''Best in the world'' roads and trails, this was the first of the three that I did but the last one that I posted and was the one that made me realise that 80 hour weeks, constant travelling to China and the obsession with more and more business was not the way to go.

In late 1999 I stopped off at a B&B north of Albury, I had just bought an expensive sports car and didn't want to park in a motel car park. The owners of the B&B and the farm it was situated on somehow overlooked the city boy, fast car image and invited me to join them and their family for dinner. The discussion soon moved on to a trip they were planning in August of 2000 to The Simpson Desert, they and 7 other local farmers planned to drive in convoy from White Cliffs to Arkaroola via Innaminka, Birdsville and Marree, most of the route was on very lightly used tracks and mining service roads. I was invited to join the group. I didn't agree immediately, I had a business to run, how would I do that from central Australia. Fortunately I made a life changing decision, will I continue working non stop or will I start to allocate more time and enjoy my life and the people I share it with. The second option won and that is what I have done for the past ten years, the mix is now around 60/40.

In this situation you really need the protection of a group. All cars were linked by radio and we never got more than a few kilometres between first and last vehicle. All had spare water, food and tyres which as it turned out we never needed.

I had a 1993 Mitsubishi Pajero that I used for work, it proved to be the perfect vehicle for the trip. That car and my current 2001 Pajero are without a doubt the best cars I have ever owned and that list includes Honda's, Porsche's, Volvo's and a SAAB. I had no mechanical problems at all, on the way back to Sydney at Bathurst I bought and fitted a new air cleaner element and when I arrived home I changed the engine oil.

The greatest surprise for me on this trip was the colour, I had expected flat, dusty and sun bleached countryside,  the reality was just the opposite.

Photos were taken with my Minolta SRT101 using Kodacolor 100 and my Sony FD73 digital recorded onto floppy discs at 640x480. 

The meeting place for the trip was at White Cliffs, this is a town that looks better the further underground you go. The nights accommodation for me was in a converted opal mine, something that my fellow travellers made great fun of the next morning after spending the night in tents.

Camerons Corner was our next overnight stop, located at the junction of three states and on the route of The Dog Fence which separates Queensland from NSW.

Yabbies by the bucket load at Innaminka, packed in ice they were kept for our Black Tie Dinner when we reached The Simpson Desert.

Cooper Creek at Innaminka destroys the perception most people have of barren desert, lots of water and millions of birds make a great contrast to the surrounding landscape.

The ritual of cresting Big Red, the first of thousands of red sand dunes that make up the Simpson Desert, the camera lens flattens the grade but it is quite steep and very soft.

Camping at the base of Big Red, site of our Black Tie Yabbie Dinner. The night sky in this part of Australia is amazing, this photo was taken using a 21mm wide angle lens with a 3 hour time exposure.

The following morning at Big Red, 6.00 am, the early morning sun creates a very different vista to the previous afternoon.

Birdsville offers many contrasts, the last photo taken in this group was atThe Dingo Caves, the flies were so bad at that place that my fellow travellers had to retreat to their cars. I had bought a fly net at Big W for $2.99 and could have sold it for 10 times that to any one of them. Us city boys are not so dumb after all.

The Birdsville track, the stuff of legend, in reality it is much smoother than most roads in Sydney.

Sturt's Stony Desert, now thats starting to look more like Sydney.

Marree is at the southern end of The Birdsville Track, a town that has almost nothing to bring you back again.

Silverton near Broken Hill is a tourist town, for people who dont make it off the main roads but it's pretty enough and with it's links to Mad Max gets it fair share of visitors. From here back to Sydney is flat, boring and bitumen.

Lolita 1963 - 1965

As I mentioned in my previous post about The Maze, fate often plays the main role in determining the direction our lives take. In 1962 I had bought my first car, a black Morris Mini 850. BMC as it was then called had fitted a very poor quality gearbox to the early cars and I was one of the lucky ones who received the updated gearbox. The local dealer at that time was Lorimers at Gordon. When I went to collect the car the mechanic who had fitted the new gearbox came out to talk to me. His name was Henry Nehrybecki. For some reason my Mini had appealed to him, he said he liked the little bits of bullshit that I had added to the car. He invited me to have a look at a car he was building in the workshop.

I had had an interest in motor sport from an early age so an invitation to see a racing car actually being built was amazing. Even more amazing when Henry asked if I would like to help him with the construction if ever I had some spare time. I had started life as a motor mechanic but it was not a successful career choice for me. I dropped out when I was up to my third year of apprenticeship. All of this happened around 1963, for the next two years I spent every Saturday in the workshop. I learned more about cars and engineering in those 100 days than I did in the three years of apprenticeship. He was a perfectionist and a very good teacher. I was very much the gopher but it was very interesting and enjoyable to see the car gradually come together.

Henry had worked for Eric Broadley's Lola team in England working on their sports cars, Formula Junior cars and finally the Formula One car. I never did find out why he left but his decision certainly added another very interesting chapter to my life.

The car was finally ready for it's first test drive in 1965, Henry drove it to Oran Park where Kevin Bartlett was waiting to give it a few fast laps. I actually got to drive the car up to the grid which really made my day. It was powered by a 1098cc Cooper S motor mounted on top of the gearbox in the same way as the Mini's. The motor was in the rear, mounted east west but it was tilted forward at around 30 degrees so that the weight was in front of the rear axles.

1965 at Oran Park. The flared guards were later replaced by cycle guards.

 1965

 1965

 The Lolita is still racing today, looking much the same as when it was built in 1965. The following photos were taken in 2008.

Henry moved on to larger and much faster cars, building the very successful Matich SR4 for Frank Matich.

 Matich SR4

SR4

Although I spent over two years of my Saturdays and some midweek evenings working on the Lolita project as an unpaid volunteer, I feel very fortunate to have worked with a master crafstmen. I learned a lot about quality, workmanship and attention to detail.